do you ever wish that you had a sponsor for everything...???

it doesn't have to be booze or drugs.

but...when i go to the supermarket i definitely look at the wine and beer and i don't do them anymore but they smile at me sometimes and tell me how many vitamins they have and i want them and it would be nice to phone a friend who would say just chill they gonna give you a headache.

and i park my car by the cheech & chong store every day like an idiot and they are always smiling at me on their sign and they have the sweet sweet gummies of oblivion that make me sleepy and useless but oblivion is every human's right, right? but who will be your gummy phone buddy? nobody, that's who.

and again at the devil supermarket i see all these entenmann's chocolate cakes and i want to eat them whole because the icing the icing is the thing! i know they are probably owned by venture capital out of secaucus by now and not the sweet dream of my youth but i need to speed dial someone but who? i make fists and close my eyes and pass them by. but its always a close call. they are no good for me. they make my feet hurt.

and when i can't stop playing the stupid fucking video game that i have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life playing...i'm really good at it but still...no nerd hotline for me. i just have to be strong and put the damn controller down.

and when i see the cigarettes behind the bong store counter on my way to pay for a stupid fucking diet coke because that's the only fucking stupid sweet thing i allow myself i see clouds of calm and pillows of nicotine dreams and i would kill for one sometimes. not all the time anymore thank god but on a bad day...could use a fag buddy. i call maria sometimes. my forever fag buddy.

and when grief gets you down...oh you get the idea.

you ever wish you had an everything sponsor? why isn't that a thing? they could charge you. 2 dollars a minute. i would pay. a soothing voice? its a no-brainer.

just a thought. okay, back to my 5th episode of FBI in a row. what the fuck, FBI? i need help...but Sela Ward...love her...

I have always wished somebody would lay out some clothes every morning so I didn’t have to think about it

Aside from that I would prefer to have final say on everything else

Thought this was going to be more like NASCAR. Every morning like "this dump was brought to you by Kirkland's Finest canned coffee - it tastes like crap but it gets your motor running"

i think a large part of growing up, to use the term in the least loaded way possible in context, is somewhat akin to learning how to become your own sponsor for a range of stuff

some lunatics attempt to accelerate this process by having kids themselves therefore having responsibility for elementary sponsorship for an even less prepared junior facsimile thrust upon them- ive seen this have mixed results out in the world

I thought this was gonna be a thread about having booze logos on my coat

Sorry, I realise Milo already made this point

"i think a large part of growing up, to use the term in the least loaded way possible in context, is somewhat akin to learning how to become your own sponsor for a range of stuff"

oh yah you learn how to deal. i've learned how to deal better over the years. but sometimes i wish there was someone who could talk me off of the ledge for a whole host of things. maybe i need jesus in my life. he holds you in his arms iirc. life can be lonely sometimes!

mostly: cigarettes were my great levelling and smoothing tool. they were my AA sponsor in a box. they were my everything tool. without them i was set adrift. almost 7 years later and i am still learning how to live without.

also: i gave alcohol over 30 years of my life and it made things seem more manageable until it didn't.

life in the raw has made me feel more of those negative feelings that i had numbed over with substances. anger, frustration, panic, anxiety. which is why i am going to start a company that makes AI-generated streaming messages of calm in your favorite celebrity voice for people to play on their phones when they feel stressed. $4.99 a message. mine will be the voice of Sela Ward telling me to put the ice cream down and also that i am awesome.

“ some lunatics attempt to accelerate this process by having kids themselves therefore having responsibility for elementary sponsorship for an even less prepared junior facsimile thrust upon them- ive seen this have mixed results out in the world”

Oh man do I feel seen right now. Just FYI for the young uns, having kids do not make your bad habits go away

I think I've got much better at self-management in the last few years. Still below where I want to be but I'll give myself some credit. I get your point Scott but other people's input still triggers my inner cussedness tbh so maybe I just need to keep sponsoring myself

My impulse control is so bad right now I feel like I need to go to some kind of meeting.

My gambling went from manageable ($10 - $20) to dropping $600 last week (thankfully, I won, and miraculously won every stupid bet I've placed recently sans one). Part of it came from my brother being distressed that Mom was asking him for money the week before his wedding and me trying to win $200 for him at March Madness.

Not just that though. Drinking also started to creep back. But now that the wedding's over I'm feeling a bit more in control. I tend to act out more when I'm overwhelmed

i am not a halfway person. i am all in when i am in.

so sad but sometimes i miss being hungover! how sad is that? not REALLY hungover but my baseline hangover that made me not give a shit about stupid stuff and all day it was just me and my pals joe and smokey. mmm...cigs and coffee. definitely curbed my appetite. after they were gone is when i learned that i can eat 40 pounds of sugar a day. and 40 pounds of wheat and salt.

by the time i am 80 i will have this life thing down i swear.

I read something years ago which was probably faux anthropology about a tribe that favoured the hangover as a state of enlightenment, and as I say it was surely bullshit but I get the meaning behind that bullshit

yeah i can dig that. sadly. it makes you really vulnerable but also somehow impervious. which is hard combo to come by naturally.

My gambling went from manageable ($10 - $20) to dropping $600 last week (thankfully, I won, and miraculously won every stupid bet I've placed recently sans one).

This is why I just can't give myself access to things. Even an innocuous game, if I find myself spending too much time with it I've got to completely uninstall (and even uninstall Steam sometimes), just saying no to clicking the icon isn't happening. Having access to a gambling app would probably ruin my life.

Yup. And I've uninstalled the app about 70 times lol

Scott, which stupid video game do you play?

it's embarrassing to say here because people here probably play really complex games that take forever to get good at. i played it years ago and it got really bad. i got really bad tennis elbow from it! i went to a doctor! we got rid of our PS4 though and it was a relief. but during the pandemic cyrus bought a PS5 from a friend of his and he basically stopped using it after a minute and i just needed something mindless cuz i was kinda going out of my mind so i bought the game again. it's called Resogun. i play Resogun: Demolition a lot. if you want mindless it does the trick. even after all this time i'm still 11th in the world. i have a new user now though. i'm not as fast as i used to be. i'm 23rd in the world with my new user. i don't play it nearly as much as i once did. i think back then it was just an avoidance thing. i became obsessive with it. i probably played a total of months if you did the math.
i used to play the Survival mode a lot back then. its an arcade-style game with one life but if you get good at it one game can be an hour. i'm still in the top 100 there but people got really good at it. like, did-they-find-some-kind-of-hack good. it is not easy to get past a certain point.
anyway, long story short, i'm an idiot. and a side-scrolling idiot at that. Defender will always be my number one. since 1981.

but, hey, i didn't smoke one friggin' cigarette during a worldwide pandemic! i am still proud of myself for that.

https://blog.playstation.com/tachyon/2022/03/96710313f54ed93e9ff0c6704550e38b73bb832e.jpg

the thing is, its not even really relaxing. its just a release. it can even be stressful. its my meth i guess. but there are times when you get in that game flow, whatever gamers call it, where it can feel really peaceful. when i'm playing well. when i'm not its just aggravating. usually that's when i stop. which is good. that's progress.
its an old game but people all over the world still play it. so its not just me. i looked and on the weekly challenge 729 users have played that this week. you'd think it would be forgotten by now.

also, one more thing: if i were delusional i might think that when they were developing this game that there was a group of people in Finland saying "okay, now what sounds do you think would be ideal for scott seward in greenfield massachusetts in some primal asmr way?"

i mean the crunchy sounds and even just the feel of the game were made for me. people must have games like that. i will occasionally buy a game thinking i'll try something new and i last maybe 1 or 2 days and i never play them again.